Courage



Definitions:
  • The state or quality of mind or spirit that enables one to face danger, fear, or vicissitudes with self-possession, confidence, and resolution; bravery.
  • fearlessness
  • spirit
  • intrepidity



Discussion:
Use the discussion board to share your personal thoughts, experiences and understandings of this virtue as we progress through the week. Participation is optional, but encouraged. Click on the discussion tab to begin.



Quotables:
Collect quotes that relate to this virtue and share them here. Edit the page, and add the quote and author. Then, give a brief explanation of how that quote relates to the target virtue.

  • "I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do. Mrs. Dubose won, all ninety-eight pounds of her...She was the bravest person I ever knew." - Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (Atticus speaking)
    • This quote shows that true courage is going through with an action even when the process is painful, knowing that doing so is the right thing to do. In this novel, Mrs. Dubose battles her morphine addiction even though she knows that every step of the battle would be painful, exhibiting true courage and also the all-elusive victory.
  • "we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord." 2 Corinthians 5:8
    • This quote shows how courage is needed in many aspects of your life especially aspects that controdict the body. Being with God is being absent from the body and therefore requires large amounts of courage.
  • "Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live."- Dorothy Thompson
    • When the quote says "no longer afraid," it means courage. With courage, a man can accomplish many things and also, according to this quote, begin to live the true meaning of life.

  • "You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do." - Eleanor Roosevelt [http://www.wisdomquotes.com]
    • Eleanor defines the virtue as getting past the fearful experiences throughout life. To gain courage, a person must push themselves to do the unexpected. As time goes on and more experiences pass, one will truly achieve strength, courage, and confidence.

  • "Cowards die many times before their deaths. The valiant never taste of death but once." - William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar
    • It is better to have courage, and face life, than to live in fear. If you are constantly worrying and holding yourself back, you are not truly experiencing life and never will

  • "Conscience is the root of all true courage; if a man would be brave let him obey his conscience." - James Freeman Clarke
    • Obeying your conscience is the bravest act anyone could do, considering most people ignore what their conscience has to say. To be considered truly brave and courageous one has to listen to their conscience and dare to be different from others who don't. They thus choose to do something that is not the most popular thing among society. And that is considered being courageous!

  • "When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
    [http://www.wisdomquotes.com/cat_courage.html]
    • This quote by Emerson, a famous author from the Transcendental period, relays the message that if a man has courage, he easily gets through situations that seem tough to handle. These situations are only ominous to people who are too afraid to take on a challenge.

  • "It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power." - Alan Cohen WisdomQuotes.com
    • Cohen says that courage is a release of the familiar, which is another way of phrasing what we discussed in class about stepping out of the box, or in other words, stepping out of the security of the familiar. You have to be brave to do this, since the box is going to try to pull you back in, so therefore courage = bravery. Cohen also mentions security, which is usually brought along with what is meaningful. He explains how because familiar things are usually taken advantage of and are no longer meaningful to us, new and exciting things, such as stepping out of the box and being couragious, will be meaningful and will bring security.
  • "The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become."-Charles DuBois
    • When DuBois said this, he meant that we should have the courage to give up what we have right now to go for what we could do.
  • "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." -Anais Nin www.quotationspage.com
    • A person's amount of courage is relevant to the quality of life they live. If someone lives their life out of the box, unafraid to try new things and be bold, they will have an 'expanded' life.
  • Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear. Mark Twain
    • This quote explains that courage is learning to control personal fears. However, a person should not be absent of fear , or fearless. True courage comes from overcoming personal struggle.
  • "Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear." Ambrose Redmoon
    • What this quote is saying is that couragous people realize that what they are doing overshadows how scared they are
      of a situation.
  • "If you are not living on the edge, you take up too much room." - Native American saying
    • You have to takes chances in your life otherwise you are just wasting time and letting your life pass you by.
  • "Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live" - Dorothy Thompson
    • This quote said by Thompson questions weather individuals are living their lives. It says that if one lets the years past in fear, they were never living at all. In Thompsons eyes, the only way to live is not with courage.
  • Keshavan Nair: With courage you will dare to take risks, have the strength to be compassionate, and the wisdom to be humble. Courage is the foundation of integrity.
    • I think that this quote is telling that courage leadings to many other attributes and in the end courage is what helps human beings excel and thrive if they possess it.
“The greatest test of courage on the Earth is to bear defeat without losing heart.”
R.G. Ingersoll
    • This quote means that even though you may fail many times while doing something, you have to have courage to keep trying again and again. Giving up shows defeat, working hard shows courage.
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  • Without courage, wisdom bears no fruit. -Baltasar Gracian
    • This quote shows how Baltasar views courage. He says that wisdom is dependent on courage and without courage wisdom bears no fruit. Which shows he thinks that wisdom is not wise without courage.
  • "Be positive and stay calm and don't let the situation get the better of you"- Dwayne Bravo
    • This quote means basically what it says. To be courageous you have to look the situation in the face and don't let it overcome you. Being calm is the best thing to help you feel and be even more courageous
  • "Yesterday I dared to struggle. Today I dare to win."- Bernadette Devlin
- This quote shows to me that it takes courage to go through struggle to get what you want.
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You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do. - Eleanor Roosevelt
- This quote really defines courage because courage is something very hard to muster up and when you look fear in the face you gain courage and strength, all important aspects of life, but all very hard to achieve because everyone is afraid of recongizing their fear.

  • Courage is the discovery that you may not win, and trying when you know you can lose." - Tom Krause
This quote is talking about the idea of taking a chance even if the consequence is big. Have the courage to get up and try even if you know that you may not come out with the ending that you wanted. You may lose, but atleast try and go for the win.

"Courage without conscience is a wild beast."- Robert G Ingersoll (John Guyer)
  • Courage is something that we have that enables us to do anything we put our mind to but if we dont have a conscience to guide our thoughts it is just something that is wild that can make us do anything
"To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself."

  • Courage is not important because it's bold, though it is, but rather because it is a virtue that defines. In taking yourself over with courage, you make a statement about who you are, and what you are capable of. It is not courageous to show courage, it is necassary for survival.
Soren Kierkegaard

  • Courage is the ladder on which all the other virtues mount.-Clare Luce Booth
    • According to this quote courage is the stepping stone on which a person much step in order to acquire all other virtures. Basically, developing courage leads to the development of other virtues because it builds character.
  • "Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I'll try again tomorrow. " -Mary Anne Radmacher
    • In this quote, Radmacher is trying to say that courage is not only the beast inside you that helps you do something you fear but also the conscience that gives you the courage to try again at something that you have failed.
  • The secret of Happiness is Freedom, and the secret of Freedom, **Courage**.” -Thucydides
    • This quote gives one the idea that to be happy, you must be free, and to be free, you must have the courage to gain freedom. This is pretty much what America is founded on.
  • J The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure.
Sven Goran Eriksson
This quote is saying that you have to have the courage to overcome the possibility of failure, or you will never succeed.


  • It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
-Mark Twain
(When I think of courage, the first image that comes to mind is the roaring lion fighting off predators, but Twain is right to point out that the inner courage is often ignored. Courage is not only the strength to say what you feel out loud, but also the strength to hold back saying certain things such as hateful words. Moral courage is often not acknowledge, and when it is acknowledged it is often as a negative thing, tagging someone as a wimp. I.E. breaking up a fight.)
  • "Courage is the art of being the only one who knows you're scared to death." - Harold Wilson
    • This quote shows that although brave people seem fearless, they really are scared. Fear is always present when someone has courage.

•"no day but today" - johnathon Larson-playwright
~ This quote from johnathon Larson's hit musical Rent is kind of like the quote "you only live once". It means that you can't be afraid to do what you wan today because you might not have the same oppourtunity tomorrow.
  • If we're growing, we're always going to be out of our comfort zone.” -John Maxwell
    • Maxwell says that in order to grow a person must leave their comfort zone and see all there is to see. If a person only lives in an area where they are most comfortable then they can never experience new things and grow.

  • "Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live."-Dorothy Thompson
    *The truth this quote brings, is that fear holds us back in life. The courage to face our fears helps us break through boundaries in our lives. When we have the courage to face our fears, nothing will hold us back, so we will finally be able to truly live our lives.
>*When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers."- Ralph Waldo Emerson
>**This quote shows courage because one should not be scared of what something looks like on the outside, but be fearless and do it anyway because in the end it will probably resolve in a good way.

  • The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure.” -Sven Goran Eriksson
    • This quote shows that one must have courage in order to be successful. Courage allows one to break through the barriers that are holding them back and the things that make them afraid. If one cannot get over their fears of failing by utilizing courage, then they will never become successful.
“Courage is the ladder on which all the other virtues mount.” - Clare Boothe Luce
- This quote shows the importance of courage. Without courage, would we stand by our wisdom or by swept away with the ignorance of the masses? Without courage, could we ever be tolerant when surrounding by others who are not? due to this, we need courage to be that bottom rung in order for us to stand up for our other virtues.



  • Whoever said anybody has a right to give up?~Marian Wright Edelman
    • This quote goes with courage beacuse no one truly has the right to give up on themselves on anything they do in life for that matter. People should have the courage already in them to conquer their struggles. They just have to realize that they have courage and reach in themselves to pull it out.

o Jim Morrison’s quote relates to courage, because he states how conquering your fears with courage make you immune to fear.


  • You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do. -Eleanor Roosevelt
    • This quote explains that courage ca be achieved by looking fear in the face, and doing what you think you cannot do. Courage is doing what you feel you cannot do, so in fact, every experience gives you more courage.




  • "Be not intimidated...
    nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties
    by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency.
    These, as they are often used, are but three different names
    for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice."
-John Adams
    • This quote explains what courage really is. It tells how you should gain courage and keep away from being a coward.
What this quote is saying is that courage is something that shows real quality when you can keep trying even though you fail.

-Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.
-Winston Churchill
this quote is good because it shows that although it is good to have courage and to take action, but it is also courageous to take a step back and let things fold out first

Without courage, wisdom bears no fruit. Baltasar Gracian, http://www.wisdomquotes.com/cat_courage.html
This quote explains about how courage is needed in one's life. Many people have grand dreams and excellent ideas, but only those who are brave enough to act upon these radical impulses become great.

**Forrest Gump**: Mama always said life was like a box a chocolates, never know what you're gonna get.

  • Although this doesn't seem as if it is a quote about courage when it is first read, it really is. To live ones life to the fullest you need to reach into "that box of chocolates" and sometimes you will get chocolates you like and chocolates you love and ones you downright hate, but it takes courage to try whatever chocolate you get. =)
  • "The only thing that stands between yourself and everything, is yourself. Once you have conquered yourself you can conquer everything." ~David Balfe
  • This quote by David Balfe was first introduced to me by my father. When I first read this, I felt that this quote was absolutely true and I still do! What David Balfe means is that once you have gotten over yourself and you have found confidence within yourself you can accomplish anything in life. Once you have become completely secure with yourself and content with yourself than anything is possible for you in life.